wrote in message
...
On Sun, 27 Dec 2009 13:12:04 -0500, Harry
wrote:

Are you under the delusion that federal employees are immune from
layoffs?

They aren't.


But it really hasn't happened since the Eisenhower administration.
Tell me about ONE year when federal employment actually went down
since 1960.
If you threaten to lay off a federal employee they start firing off
171s and get a new job before they lose a pay check. Usually that is
not even necessary because when they close an agency, another one
springs up in the same building with the same people. The only thing
that changed was the name on the building.
They changed so many signs during the Carter administration the joke
was GSA installed them with thumb screws.
Us Coast and Geodetic Survey on Montrose rd became ESSA and then NOAA.
AEC in Germantown became ERDA and then DOE (maybe something else I
forgot in between). HEW on Parklawn drive changed names a couple
times ending up being HHS.
If you were walking around in the building every day nothing changed
but the stationary.


Actually, the RIF I vaguely recall took place during the reagan
mis-administration, in the fall of his first year in office. I remember
it because I had as a client a couple of postal unions, and thanks to
the contract, they were exempt. The client contact was recruited by the
reagan admin to become deputy pmg, and I could have gone along as his
chief assistant. We both were not interested. The USPS was infected with
the worst management of any organization on the face of the earth.

You have touched on the truth of the matter. Everyone ended up being
exempt. I was still living in the belly of the beast in 1981. There
was some shuffling around but they never actually "Reduced" the
"Force".

BTW wasn't it Reagan who privatized the USPS and actually made it
competitive with Fed-x and UPS? I use the mail a lot these days and
they actually provide superior service at a lower cost. Try Click n
ship. You can print (or Email someone) the PDF of a shipping label,
put it on the box and the post man will pick it up for around half of
what Fed-x/UPS charges.
I use click n ship several times a month.


USPS is going broke. They're cheap, but certainly not great. We use them
100s of times a month. They're not very good with pickups, and I suppose
they're better than the others, but the loss/damage rate is pretty high.
Dealing with them on the phone is trying to say the least. Fedex and UPS
have their own problems, mostly to do with cost and delivery.

--
Nom=de=Plume